Monochrome
by HeyDay
Summary: Nathan Prescott's confined in a detention center and just as visiting hours are nearly over, a stranger stops by to say hello.


The guard brought the visitor to him and explained the procedure to them both, but Nathan Prescott was only looking into the depths of his coffee. He didn't feel like talking to anyone at the moment, but he also didn't refuse the notice when they said she was a student from Blackwell High. It was still better than his lawyer, who had been cold and patronizing with his legal jargon, terms like "self-defense plea" and "exemption due to your mental condition." Better than his father, who was arriving tomorrow morning, and would be disappointed, resentful and as distant as ever, if that was even possible for a man who had already given up on his youngest son long before.

 _You have twenty minutes_ , the guard said emotionlessly. _Keep your hands to yourself and pass nothing under the glass. The camera only records video for administration purposes, so what you both discuss will only be between the two of you and will not come up in a court of law._

The guard strode away, footsteps slowly drifting out of hearing. Nathan thought coffee shouldn't be in a paper cup. It ruined the taste of the beans. But detention centers had rules, and that meant no shoelaces, no ties, nothing that an inmate could bring to bear against himself, whether by strangulation or otherwise. Somehow that included porcelain mugs, which he considered a huge leap in logic.

"I know about the photos."

Nathan Prescott looked up from his strong black and into the gaze of his classmate. He struggled to place her name as he studied her through the viewing glass. Short chestnut hair. Light freckles. Pretty in that commonplace, girl-next-door manner. He himself preferred blondes. With leather belts, handcuffs and ropes. "Max? What are you doing here?"

"Visiting," Max replied coolly. "Amongst other things." She slid into the seat across him, and all the while she held his eye. Nathan expected anger and disgust, like the cops who cuffed him and led him to the patrol car, and the parents and students who stood outside to watch as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher with the body into the ambulance. He was surprised to find none of that in her gaze. Just a strange bitterness. "You were thinking Victoria was coming, right? Or maybe someone from the Vortex Club? Hate to say it, but a friend at a party isn't the same thing as a friend when the world is against you."

What made him flinch were the way those words cut straight to the bone and the truth. As if she looked at him and picked them right out from the thoughts he buried deep in his moments of self-loathing, before he swallowed the pills and went out to pretend that he was a somebody because he was Nathan and not because he was a Prescott. It was something about her eyes. Her cool blue eyes.

"I just came here to see how you were doing," Max continued when Nathan didn't reply. She shrugged and leaned her arms onto the bench on her side. "Look at the guy who killed my best friend. Her name's Chloe by the way, just in case you didn't…well…just in case you two weren't on a first name basis already." She started drumming her fingers absentmindedly against the metal, glancing elsewhere. "Find some closure, you know?" She said out loud, giving him her profile.

Nathan stared at her warily. "You don't hate me?"

"Maybe I do," Max answered, looking back to him. "But that wouldn't help either of us, now would it?"

Nathan changed tacks. Suddenly he didn't want to go into all that. To give the girl a name. A history. A story of hopes and dreams – how she wanted to be a model and leave Arcadia Bay or something – cut short. It would be pouring barrels of salt over an open wound. "How do you know about the photos?" He asked instead, then inwardly berated himself for picking that topic.

Max shrugged, a tiny smile on her face that didn't quite reach the eyes. "That will be my little secret. Did you take them, or did Jefferson do it?"

Nathan's face went grey, and he sagged back into his seat, his heart sinking like an anchor in the sea. "You know about him too?" He croaked.

"Well, I did see the police cuff him and lead him out to a patrol car after school, not a few hours after they took you away. People are already talking about it on Facebook. Blackwell Academy's reputation'is in the shits now." Max held her hands out before her and up in the air. "World-Class Photographer a Closet Fetishist Murderer," she declared. "That will be the headline." She crossed her arms and leaned them on the bench again. "To think that I had actually had a crush on the guy," she murmured. She shook her head. "Urgh, but what can you do?" She asked rhetorically and sardonically. "That's the way it goes, huh?"

Nathan looked at her, looked at her smiling her crooked smile at him, and he focused his eyes back down at his coffee again and wished that this girl would leave him alone or that the floor would swallow him. Maybe both. "I'm sorry for everything," he croaked, wondering how this was so much worse than if she had come to him screaming and shouting and cursing, with none of this gentle sympathy and bitter, mocking dryness.

"I'm sorry too," Max affirmed. "But sorry won't change what's has happened."

'No," Nathan agreed. He looked up. "Maybe a time machine could?" He joked weakly.

Max's smile faltered. "Maybe. Or maybe it might make things worse."

Nathan blinked. "I don't see how things could be any worse than they are right now."

"You might be surprised," Max replied with a peculiar tone. She took her phone out, and checked it as she stood up. "I got to go now," she said, her face lit up by the glow from the screen as she grimaced at something on the display. "Had to hitch a ride to get here, and my driver wants to go home." She pocketed her phone and looked him in the eye again. "Do you want me to come by tomorrow?"

"Yes."

Max nodded. "Afternoon. Not morning. School's still on, even if Jefferson's out of the picture. You're such a lucky shit." Then she waved him goodbye and was gone from his sight, leaving Nathan Prescott to wonder why a stranger he had never spoken to before was offering him a friendship he felt he didn't deserve.

Later in his detention cell, he sat up the whole night crying and shaking in the cold.


End file.
